


Endearments

by AkiRah



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Fenris is Bad at Feelings, fun with language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:14:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4604607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkiRah/pseuds/AkiRah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every Thedan language has a different word for what she is to him, and Fenris can't seem to voice any of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Amatus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MaidOfRage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaidOfRage/gifts).



> Amatus: A tevinter endearment meaning "my dear" or "my beloved". Seeing as it's actually a latin word, I've elected to use the feminine "Amata"

The first time the word _Amata_ came bubbling up to Fenris’s lips it broke the smile on his mouth and he swallowed it down, face contorting at its imagined flavor. It had been three years since he’d spoken Tevene outside of swears or the occasional idiom, a defense mechanism to further distance himself from his past. 

He couldn’t even remember when he learned the word _Amata_. Darling, dear, beloved heart. It wasn’t a word Danarius would have used, he thought. Maybe he learned it from someone else. Another slave? He couldn’t remember. But his head was comfortably fuzzy with drink and Hawke’s leg was barely touching his. Little touches over the clothes to keep from irritating his skin or causing his tattoos to glow. 

He was learning to love the little pains that came with her touch, though he kept that to himself because she would have been _horrified_ that she hurt him unless he spent thirty minutes explaining. It was the glow that was the real problem. The way his tattoos lit up with his heart beat. 

He hated her. Hated parts of her, at least. Her tendency to agree with Anders, blatant disregard of how _dangerous_ and _evil_ magic was. 

But he loved her all the same. She was his _Amata_ , and he would _never_ use the word. 

“Fenris,” Hawke looked up from her cards, eyebrow raised and mouth twisted into a smirk. “Why do you look like someone just shoved an entire lemon up your ass?”

Varric snorted a laugh and Merrill pressed her knuckle to her mouth to avoid doing the same. Anders, always oddly sufferable during Wicked Grace, rolled his eyes and muttered that it was an honest miracle Hawke could tell the difference between scowls. Hawke laughed and kicked Anders lightly under the table. 

“Be nice,” she said with a shake of her head. “He doesn’t have a monopoly on brooding at this table, ya’know.” 

Anders shrugged and took another drink. After that mug he would switch to water, no longer allowed to get drunk. For a moment they were a normal group of friends. For a moment Kirkwall was stable and sane. They could almost ignore the impending Qunari threat on the dock, the mounting tensions that threatened to suffocate Kirkwall beneath them.

The round continued. 

Everyone but Varric ended the game poorer than they’d started. The pot covered the tab and the excess went into Varric’s pockets to cover future tabs and favors Fenris could suspect but never prove. Anders agreed to walk Merrill home, but they only left the Hanged Man after Hawke made him promise to be nice. She kissed him on the temple and Anders returned it with one of his one and Fenris bit back on a snarl.

Hawke squeezed Merrill in her arms and spun her in a small circle to Merrill’s voiced protestations and visible delight. 

“Hanging out for a while, Hawke?” Varric asked. Fenris waited expectantly for the inevitable _yes_. He would kiss her once before walking back to Hightown alone but instead Hawke chuckled and sighed. 

“Hanging out in the Hanged Man. Heh. We both know I would, but I promised Aveline I’d drop by the Barracks before I went home. Tomorrow?” 

“Tomorrow.” Varric agreed. 

Hawke stretched and turned to Fenris. “Join me?” 

There was a moment where he hesitated, but Fenris recovered and nodded. He followed her into the Kirkwall night, rain on the horizon and the sharp sea air almost detectable over the general stink that was Lowtown. 

“You never did answer me.” Hawke folded her hands behind her head, watching the stars instead of the road ahead of her as she walked. “Earlier, when you made the lemon-butt face.”

Fenris snorted a small laugh and then coughed to cover it. 

“Cute. But not an answer.” 

“Is there anything I can do to make you drop this, Hawke?” 

“Short of letting me pin you breathless to a wall? Nothing springs to mind.” She winked.. “I’m teasing. You don’t want to talk about it. That’s fine. We’ve got places to be anyway.” 

Fenris picked at the red scarf tied around one of his wrists and Hawke slowed to stopping. She turned to look at him, her usual smirk replaced by a small frown and her eyebrows furrowed with softening concern. The effect was striking, the affection in her eyes almost palpable. He ached to take her up on that offer, but the memories stirred up after the first time had been too much to handle, this time, he was sure, they would be worse.

He exhaled and started to keep walking rather than face this. Walking was easy. Running was easier. Talking had always been much more difficult. 

“Fenris, _what_?” 

“It’s nothing, m--” _my Amata_ , the word stuck in his throat again. “--Marian.” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use my first name before.” She raised an eyebrow and darted in to press a kiss (barely a brush of her lips to his skin but the flesh tingled and glowed faintly even as she pulled away) to his temple. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Fenris gave her a faint smile and chose not to comment on the kiss. “Yes.”


	2. Vhen'an

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris meets with Merrill and is annoyed by her use of elvhen, more annoyed that he can always understand everything she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vhen'an: An elvhen endearment poetically meaning "My heart/My Home", used with lovers.  
> The elvhen used is taken from FenxShiral's "Project Elvhen"

“ _Savhalla, Fenris!_ ” Merrill was as unsettlingly cheery as ever when Fenris dropped into the Alienage looking for Hawke. She hadn’t been at the Hanged Man or the Barracks and he would rather drop dead than walk into Anders’ clinic without her. 

So he’d hoped she was visiting Merrill instead. 

Merrill hoisted her bag of groceries and waited for him to join her as she started back towards her run down hut. “ _Ga son?_ ”

“Fine.” Fenris snorted. He paused. “You’re doing it again.”

“ _”Ahnas?”_ ” Merrill turned and fixed her wide green eyes on his face, beaming with childish innocence. Fenris narrowed his eyes in response to indicate that he was neither taken in nor fooled. Merrill just smiled more widely. 

“I don’t speak Elvhen.” Fenris growled. 

“Of course not.” He was relieved that she elected to use the trade tongue. “But you can _listen_ in Elvhen. You do it all the time.” 

“Not by _choice_.” 

Merrill shrugged one skinny shoulder and pushed open the door to her hovel with her hip. Fenris almost asked why she didn’t lock it, some of Hawke’s protective nature having rubbed off on him in the three years he’d spent around her. 

“Have you seen Hawke today?” He lingered in the doorway, arms crossed while Merrill unpacked her groceries. 

“No.” Merrill shook her head. “ _Silan min’var vhell Anders, vis as i’tel Varric.”_

“She’s not.” Fenris slumped and sighed. “And _stop that_.” 

“Are you going to go to Anders’ clinic then?” 

Fenris looked behind him, the sun beat down on the Alienage squalor, and then looked back at Merrill. “It smells worse in Darktown than it does here.” Anders was doubtlessly dragging Hawke into some manner of mage-related foolishness. Again. And it was nothing he wanted to put up with. 

“Want to join me for lunch, then?” Merrill beamed. 

It was one of those moments when he was forced to wonder if she was _oblivious_ to his obvious and oft stated disdain, or if she simply didn’t care. 

“I picked up plenty.” 

“I. . .” Fenris looked at the produce on the table. “Very well.” 

Merrill quietly clapped her fingers together in blatant delight. “I’ll find you something relatively clean to sit on.” 

“I live in a dilapidated mansion.” 

“With real chairs!” Merrill grinned. “That’s a definite improvement.”

* * *

Lunch was . . . surprisingly pleasant. When she was pretending not to be a blood mage, Merrill was rather charming company. He didn’t trust it, but he could at least see why Varric and Hawke felt so protective over her. 

“Why do you stay?” he asked. Setting his cup on the table. “You should give all this up. Go back to your clan.” 

Merrill dropped her eyes to the table. “ _Min’an, se anel, mala ara vhen._ ”

Fenris snorted. “Must be comforting to be so sure.” The last word though, _vhen_ stuck in his brain. “Home” but with a warmth beneath it he hadn’t felt before. He twisted it around in his head. “Is there a . . . word, your people use for . . . a person, who is home?” 

Merrill tilted her head and looked back up at him, “Hawke?” 

Fenris nodded. 

“ _’Ma vhen’an_ ,” Merrill said. 

The words were warm, reminding him of Hawke’s smile, her little eye roll, the fire in her eyes when they fought. His home, his heart.


	3. Kadan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke almost goes down in a fight, "I love you"s are growled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kadan: A Qunlat word literally translating to "Where the heart lies", an all purpose word for people one cares about. Also sometimes used to me "the center of the chest".

The first language Fenris had learned after Tevene was scattered Qunlat. It had happened mostly on accident while serving as Danarius’s pet. Occasionally, in moments of frustration he would snap out a _vashedan_ instead of _kaffas_ , but unless he was swearing (specifically _not_ in Tevene) or actively quoting the Qun, Fenris stuck to the trade tongue. 

No one, then, was more confused than Fenris when, as Hawke took a hard blow to the head, Fenris screamed, “ _Kadan!_ ” in his panic. 

Hawke buried her knife in the gut of the man who’d struck her and turned around as he fell. 

“Ka-what?”

Fenris’s cheeks turned darker. 

“Kadan.” Fenris repeated. “It means . . . chest. Stab him in the chest.” 

“Broody,” Varric was almost beside himself with laughter. “I don’t know what _Kadan_ means, but you are a _terrible_ liar.”

“That _is_ what it means.” Fenris snapped. “We’re wasting time. We should go.” 

He pushed past his chuckling companions towards their goal, painfully aware that his ears were burning.

* * *

“ _Chest_ , really?” 

Fenris didn’t look up from his bottle to address Hawke where she was hanging around in the doorway. 

“Learn to knock.” Fenris snorted. 

“Why? I can pick locks.” Hawke dropped into the chair across from him, her boots up on the table and her expression teasing and fond. “Varric did some digging, you weren’t _lying_ about Kadan meaning chest.” 

“I said as much.” 

Hawke sighed and dropped her feet to one side so she could stand. She crossed the room to him and grabbed Fenris by the hair. He hissed, the pain pleasant, as she bent him backwards and covered his mouth with her own. 

He pulled her into his lap, raked his teeth across her lower lip and growled as she pulled away. 

“I love you too, Fenris.”


	4. Vhedan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vhedan: An accidental portmanteau of "Kadan" and "Vhen'an"

It is early morning. He can hear people outside, the clatter crash of dishes below them and someone shouting in Nevarra. No one knows who they are in Cumberland. The circles are broken, the templars and the mages are at one another’s throats. Anders, the idiot, has ignited all of Thedas, it seems. 

To what end? 

He can’t focus on his anger. He touches it, but then lips press to back of his neck and send buzzing sensation through his tattoos and it’s gone. 

“Morning,” Hawke mumbles in his ear. She tightens one arm around him and shifts her elbow under his head. Her legs are tangled around his. They are safe in Cumberland, for a time at least. 

Consciousness tugs more firmly at Fenris, loosening his tongue from behind his teeth and he rolls over to press his face to the hollow of Hawke’s throat. 

“Morning, _vhedan_.” The word is jumbled, half murmured and meaningless and _vhen’an_ and _kadan_ race to the tip of his tongue and crash into each other before they fall gracelessly off his tongue. 

Hawke chuckles and the sound reverberates from her breastbone to his lips. “That’s a new one. What’s it mean?”

“It doesn’t.” Fenris growled. 

“Well, it should.” She curls her arms around him, fingernails scratching lightly over his skin. “Or does it not mean anything the way _Kadan_ meant fucking chest?”

Fenris sighs. “It’s not a word,” he explains, awake and now mortified. 

“It is _now_.” Hawke shifts, rolling and wiggling so she’s eye level with him. She kisses him slow and tugs him close. “It’s our word. My _vhedan_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word "vhedan" can credit its creation to my friend Vaude, to whom I mumbled it once. She thought it was very cute. I think she's cuter.


End file.
